The Story That Just Won't Go Away

I don't want to re-hash everything I've written about the absurd privatization push / corporate handout happening in Florida.  You can find plenty of material on it by just looking back.  I want to take a minute though to try to update the situation, again, as well as possible.  So I won't go into a long rant about anything here, I'll just give you some quick bullet points.  And just FYI, none of this even deals with the brewing situation in Southwest Ranches, where CCA is forcing an immigration detention center down the throat of a very angry populace.

• Florida is also trying to privatize healthcare for its entire prison system (in addition to privatizing half the prisons).  The bidding process has drawn a lot of scrutiny and generated many questions, so much so that the state had to push back the date for the bids to be submitted. It will probably go through though, unfortunately.  In a related story, North Carolina is foolishly looking to do the same thing.
• The executive director of the union representing COs in the state wrote an excellent opinion piece urging the state Senate to find some other way to save money, considering the questions surrounding the claim that the venture will save $22 million.
• The editorial board of the Palm Beach Post came out with an excellent piece questioning Gov. Scott's motives in pushing the privatization, given the $1 million donated by the industry leading up to the last election and questions regarding the proposed cost savings.
• A great piece from the Miami Herald discussing how special interests are dominating the discussion of privatization, and how the state needs to focus on alternatives to incarceration since they already have an enormous prison population.
• Also, the state should really consider the company it's about the get in bed with, as a GEO Group guard appears to have been extremely negligent in permitting a prisoner to commit suicide.
• Finally, I couldn't help but link to this absurd example of poor journalism, as the editorial board at the Daytona Beach News-Journal claims privatization offers "Major Savings."  The argument is based on practically nothing but the long-ago dismissed notion that if private prisons fail to offer savings, they won't get contracts (they actually just lobby harder and still get them).  The real icing on the cake comes when the author(s) admit that the state previously lost tens of millions of dollars in a privatization venture, but make no mention of how a similar problem could be avoided this time around.  Really, this is one of the absolute dumbest things I've ever seen an editorial board write.